Does D have too many features?

[Simen Kjaeraas]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 01:20:53 +0200, akaz <nemo at utopia.com> wrote:

> *the confusion between . and -> operators (yes, I know the latter does  
> not exist in D, is just for talking first here) for classes and structs  
> and why classes are or are not pointers and why structs behave  
> differently (or, at least, this is how I perceive it) and why not the  
> pointer syntax is not used if they are pointers (well, references) and  
> so on (yes, I am a bit dizzy, but is not entirely my fault; it's also  
> D's).

Really? This is one of the big pluses to me.


> *the writing of the p[0..len] that you need to use when some other code  
> (C code) passes you the pointer to data and the length (I just do not  
> like it)

While I can agree it's not perfect, I have a hard time seeing a better
solution. Somewhere the information has to be combined to create a proper
array.


> *it is also my impression that you cannot declare int[]  
> x=<<some_initialization>> as a static array with length filled in by  
> compiler at the compile time, since the length is known? instead, x is  
> interpreted as a dynamic array (which, also, I do not like that same  
> syntax, or very similar, is used for both concepts).

Agreed.



> *the fact that the calling of a function bears no indication if you  
> modify or not the passed variable (I much prefer the C-ish style of  
> foo(a,&b); where you *almost* know that b will be modified)

Yeah. C# truly got this right with its enforcement of marking passed
parameters ref or out. I'd really like that for D too.